The Dimensions of Caribbean Assimilationism

Abstract

Composed to echo the plight of the French Caribbean soldiers who fought on the eastern front during World War I, this chanson veillé— funeral song—has been chanted generation after generation during wakes in Guadeloupe long after the armistice. The Battle of the Dardanelles, which took place near Turkey in 1915, was a particularly deadly campaign, which claimed many lives and ended in failure. On the French side, Africans and Caribbeans made up two-thirds of the Expeditionary Corps of the Orient;¹ they were believed to be more resistant to malaria than white troops. Belonging to a memory long obscured, only recently have these pages of French Caribbean history been resurrected through the work of historians, activists, and artists. Naming the dead, recording their names in written documents, and creating artworks about their experience have been some of the acts undertaken to bring the Caribbean contribution to the war out of oblivion. In some instances, these celebrations fused with official ceremonies, but not always. For instance, Martinican historian Sabine Andrivon-Milton, founder of the Association for the Military History of Martinique, has worked extensively toward an official rehabilitation of these men.² In a less formal manner, in 2003 and 2004, two events were organized in several towns of Guadeloupe to pay tribute to Guadeloupean participation in wars (both World Wars, Indochina, Algeria).